Thirty days were spent in absolute desert, and the caravan was always attacked when it encamped by a water supply; but the only loss which the foe caused during about six weeks of journeying was in the big battle in which the man and woman were killed. A little later on and up to our own time, the water-cisterns were defended by fortifications. Leaving arid and rocky hills,
“Boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretched far away.”
“Boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretched far away.”
“Boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretched far away.”
“Boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretched far away.”
“Through these,” says Varthema, “we travelled five days and five nights. Now you should understand all about it. It is a great level stretch of white sand, fine as flour, and if by mischance the wind blow from the south, all may be reckoned as dead; even with the wind in our favour we could not see each other ten paces off. Wherefore there are wooden boxes set on the camels, and in these the travellers sleep and eat. The guides go on in front with compasses, even as if they were at sea. Many died here from thirst; and very many, having dug for water and found it, drank it until they burst; and here are mummies made.”
It is interesting to know that, up to 1908, when the railway for the conveyance of pilgrims from Damascus to Mecca was completed, those of the richer sort still used the wooden protection which our author describes. Possibly the mummies of which he speaks were merely corpses dried in the sun; but the preservation of the dead body by embalming was a very ancient practice in these parts. Doughty found no actual mummies in the Nabatean temples; but he collected and brought back, from the funeral chambers at El Khreby, resinous matters of the same character as those found in Egyptian sarcophagi. Presently, Varthema shall see powders for the mummification of the dead sold outside the Mosque at Mecca. Dried human flesh was an important part of the stock in trade of an Arabian physician whom Burton came across. But faith in the efficacy of pulverised mummy has been by no means confined to Arabia. In the Seventeenth Century, Sir Thomas Browne, tells us in his “Urn Burial” that: “Mummy is become merchandise, Miriam cures wounds and Pharaoh is sold for Balsams”; and even within the last few years Harry de Wint found the repulsive drug on sale as a cure for cancer at Serajevo in Bosnia.
It so happened that the usual discomposing sounds, made by the movements of unstable sand-hills, brokethe silence of the desert just where the Prophet had once stopped to pray. The superstitious Moslems must have been wholly dismayed and demoralized, for even the iron nerve of Varthema was strained; he tells us that he “passed on with great danger, and never thought to escape.” At last, a thorn bush or two broke the monotony of this “sea of sand,” and the travellers knew that Medina was now only three days off. Even more pleasing than the sight of vegetation to those pilgrims, who had “seen neither beast, bird, reptile, no, nor insect, for fifteen days,” was the pair of turtledoves that lodged in the branches of the thorn bush. And, most delightful of all was the well of water which gave being to this miniature oasis. The water-skins were refilled; and, so copious was the supply that sixteen thousand camels were re-laden with the precious burden. Hard by, on a mountain, dwelt a curious colony, who depended on the well for their water. Varthema could see them in the far distance, “leaping about the rocks like wild goats.” And one does not wonder at their excitement; for the cistern would not fill up again until the rains should come. Varthema learned that these people were Jews, who burned with hatred of all Mohammedans, probably not without very just cause. “If they catch a Moor, they flay him alive.” They had the shrill voice of a woman, were swarthy, and went about naked. Probably their “nakedness” really amounted to their wearing a simple loose robe or a loin-cloth only. That they lived on goats’ flesh is not remarkable; for it is the staple food of the Bedouin Arab. Probably they were of small stature; but Varthema dwarfs then into comicality: he gives them but five or six spans of height. But he only saw them from afar. That they were Jews is no fable. In spite of the general expulsion of Jews from Arabia with the first successes of Islam, the existence of a remnant of the Chosen People in this district has been well authenticated by Arabian writers; they were to be found there nearly three centuries after Varthemasaw them, and towards the close of the past century Doughty heard tradition of them. By some accident Varthema, or more likely, his printer, places them between Medina and Mecca; but he came across them before he reached Medina. It is hard to account for their presence in this isolated and desolate district; and many are the explanations which have been offered, and varied are the legends which have grown up. Badger thought “that their immigration occurred after the devastation of Judea by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, and that the colony was enlarged by successive bands of refugees down to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus and the persecutions to which they were subjected under the Emperor Hadrian.” Here is one of the many problems of History which are “beyond conjecture and hopeful expectation.”
Two days after this event, the pilgrims came up to another cistern of water; they were now only four miles from Medina. Everyone thoroughly cleansed himself thereat from all the grime and sweat of the hot, dusty desert, and put on fresh linen, in order that he might present himself purified before the sepulchre of the Prophet on the morrow. All around, the land “lay barren and under the curse of God”; but, two stones’ cast from the city there was a grove of date-trees and a refreshing conduit.
Our traveller found Medina to be but a poor place of about 300 hearths. Food was brought thither from Arabia Felix, Cairo and Ethiopia; first, to a port on the Red Sea, and thence overland by caravan—a journey which occupied four days. He found the inhabitants “scum”; a character which all travellers of all ages agree in giving them, and which they shared with the people of Rome and of all places whither pilgrims and the folk of many nations were wont to congregate. The Sunnites and Shiites there, the two great sects which divide the Moslem world “kill each other like beasts anent their heresies.” And Varthema, the pretendedproselyte, suddenly remembers that he is writing for a Christian world, and is careful to assure it of his own conviction that “these (beliefs) are false—all of them.”
“One wished to see everything,” he says, so the pilgrims passed three days at Medina, “Some guide took each pilgrim by the hand and led him to the place where Mohammed was buried.” Varthema gives a description of the Mosque, than which, says Burton, nothing could be more correct. “It is surmounted,” writes the English traveller, “by a large gilt crescent, springing from a series of globes. The glowing imagination of the Moslems crown this gem of the building with a pillar of heavenly light, which directs, from three days’ distance, the pilgrim’s steps towards El Medinah.” Varthema avers that the marvellous light had a real matter of fact basis, being due to a cunning deception. Whether due to trickery, or to the suggestive efficacy of faith and expectant attention, the miracle once had a rival in the more ancient supernatural outburst, every Eastertide, of the holy fire at the altar of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Neither Varthema nor his friend the Captain of the Mamelukes was a man easy to dupe, or given to the conjuring up of visions. “At the third hour of the night,” we read, “ten or twelve greybeards came to our camp, which was pitched two stones’ throw from the gate, crying, some here, some there, ‘There is no God but God! Mohammed is the Prophet of God! O Prophet! Do obeisance to God! Do obeisance to the Prophet! We implore forgiveness of sin.’ Our captain and we ran out at this clamour; for we thought the Arabs were on us to rob the caravan. We demanded why they were crying out; for they made the same sort of din which may be heard among us Christians when a saint works a miracle.” (Varthema cannot conceal his sceptical temper!) “These elders answered: ‘Do ye not see the splendour coming forth from the tomb of the Prophet?’ Our Captain replied that, for his part, he could see nothing, and asked us ifanyone had seen anything; but we all said, ‘No.’ Then one of the old men demanded: ‘Are you slaves?’ Which is to say, Mamelukes. Our Captain replied, ‘Yes, we are slaves.’ To which the old man responded: ‘O, sirs, it is not given to you to see these heavenly things; for you are not yet well grounded in the faith.’” Now, in the morning of the same day, the Captain had offered the Sherîf of the Mosque 3,000 ducats to see the body of the Prophet, telling him that he had neither father nor mother, brothers nor sisters, wife nor children, and had come thither to save his soul. Whereupon the Sherîf had fallen into a rage and demanded how he dared desire to behold him for whom God made the heavens and the earth. Since the body was entombed within closed-up, solid walls, such an audacious request marks the sceptical irreverence and haughty insolence of the Mameluke, even before one of the most sacred temples of Islam. The Mamaluke had declared himself ready to pluck out his own unholy eyes for love of the Prophet, if only he might see his body first. The Sherîf, probably in order to silence him, then said that Mohammed had been translated to Heaven by angels. So now, the Captain shouted contemptuously to the reverend greybeard who had told him that it was denied him to see the vision by reason of imperfect faith: ‘You fool! Shall I give thee three thousand ducats? By God, I will not. You dog, son a dog!’.... The Captain thought that enough; and said so; and, turning round to his comrades, exclaimed: ‘See where I wanted to throw away 3,000 seraphim!’ And he mulcted the Mosque by forbidding any of his men to visit it again.
Varthema dispels the popular belief that Mohammed’s coffin was suspended in mid-air by the attraction of a magnet. “I tell you truth when I affirm that there is no coffin of iron or steel, or any loadstone, or any loadstone mountain within four miles.”
The journey from Medina to Mecca was at this particulartime beset with more than usual difficulty and peril. The Hejaz was nominally a vassaldom of Cairo; really, it was under the almost absolute rule of its own despot; and we learn from Arabian Chroniclers that the despotism was being fought for by rival brethren. Indeed, throughout Eastern lands, war between sons for succession to the throne rendered vacant by the death of a father was the rule. And, in the long run, this bloody business usually ended in the success of the most capable competitor; so that, however horrible, it did not work out badly; for what can be more fatal to a weak, subservient people than an incompetent ruler? “There was a very great war,” says Varthema, “one brother being against another; four brethren contended for the lordship of Mecca; so that we travelled for the space of ten days; and twice on our way we fought with 50,000 Arabs.” Probably Varthema habitually over-estimated numbers; but there is no doubt that he had cause for alarm before he reached the second of the two sacred goals.
Our traveller descended one of the two passes cut through the hills which girdle and defend Mecca, and found himself in a “very famous, fair and well-peopled” city. The caravan from Cairo had arrived eight days before. Joseph Pitts, the Exeter sailor, also tells us how the “caravans do even jump all into Mecca together.” “Verily,” says Varthema, “never did I see such a multitude gathered together in one place as during the twenty days I stayed thereat.” He writes us at some length, though not so minutely or correctly as Burckhardt, of the great house of Allah and of the Ka’abah within it—a building which conserves the form of the old heathen temple and which was a place of pilgrimage for ages before Mohammed; but this he did not know. He speaks of the sacred pigeons of the precincts; of the seven circuits made by the pilgrims; of the sacred well Zemzem, in whose brackish waters the Moslem cleanse themselves both spiritually and physically; for did not Hagar quench the dyingIshmael’s thirst therewith? of the sacrifice of sheep, and how the flesh was cooked over a fire made of camels’ dung; of elaborate rituals; of the gift of what was superfluous in the feast to the many famished poor among the pilgrims; of the ascent to Arafat, where Gabriel taught Adam to erect an altar; and of that strange, ancient relic of heathen times, the casting of stones at the devil. But he says not one word of the “Black Stone” of the Ka’abah, once the fetish of ancient Arabian worship, and kissed to-day by the Hadji (pilgrim). We learn that Mecca, like Medina, was fed from Arabia Felix and Africa. It was a mart as well as a place of pilgrimage.
Now for a marvel. In an enclosure of the Mosque were two unicorns! They were presents from an Ethiopian monarch to the Sultan of Mecca as the finest thing that could be found in the world ... the richest treasure ever sent. “Now, I will tell you of their make,” writes our author; “the elder is shaped like a colt of 30 months, and he has a horn on his forehead of about 3 arm lengths. The other is like a colt of one year, and his horn is the length of 3 hands. The colour is dark bay; the head like a hart’s, but no long neck; a thin short mane hangs over one side; the legs are slender and lean, like a goat’s; the foot, a little cloven, long, and much like a goat’s, with some hair at the back of the legs. Truly, this monster must be a very fierce and rare animal.”
Whatever our interpretation, this is no “traveller’s tale” of Varthema’s making. His painstaking veracity, except in the “practical politics” of life, has been confirmed a hundred times over. Later on in his book, we come across a description of the structure and habits of the elephant which is a triumph of sharp prose-vision and detailed matter of fact. One cannot doubt that he saw a beast at Mecca which resembled, not remotely, the Unicorn supporter of our Royal Coat of Arms. It is remarkable that Pliny describes a similar animal, and that Ctesias, Aristotle and Strabo speak of the Unicorn. Thename occurs nine times in the Bible; but it is commonly supposed to refer to the Rhinoceros. Varthema’s strange beast was a very different animal, apparently resembling the horse-like creature with a solitary central horn which Niebuhr found repeatedly sculptured on the ruins of Persepolis. Similar beasts have been reported from Abyssinia and Cape Colony; and at one time the unicorn was believed in India to inhabit that refuge of the rare, inaccessible Thibet. Yet a generation that is still with us regarded the gorillas and pygmy men of Hanno as Carthaginian fables, until Du Chaillu brought back carcasses of the one and Stanley gave authentic word of the other. But scientists leave us no hope that some happy traveller shall come across a unicorn dead or alive. For the stumpy protuberance of the rhinoceros is an epidermal tissue, and the true bony horns of the deer tribe are developments which grow from, or correspond to, two frontal bones; and it would be impossible for a bony outgrowth to proceed from the mesian line. Varthema’s statement must be deemed by all who know anything of comparative anatomy to be incorrect. The great Owen thought that one of the two horns of the animal must have been broken off or remained undeveloped. Mr. Dollman, of South Kensington Museum, whose opinion the author sought through the kind agency of Mr. S. le Marchant Moore, thinks the creature was an onyx, with one of its horns suppressed and both gentlemen suggest “that Varthema saw the creature in profile, and having ascertained as well as he could under the circumstances, the existence of one horn, did not trouble himself much further about it: possibly the horn might have become more or less incurved.” We must leave the question there, until someone shall give us ocular evidence that Varthema made not the slightest blunder: trulyhis“horn shall be exalted!”
Varthema had now been signally successful in gratifying the passion to penetrate unknown and mysterious regions which Spanish and Portuguese discovery had arousedin him. So far as is known, he was the first European Christian to reach the holy cities of Arabia; and since his day no traveller ventured on the long and perilous route which he took. At least six Europeans managed to visit Mecca in the last century; but they all took the short route from the Red Sea.
Andnow, in the spirit of Alexander sighing for new worlds to conquer, he looked forward with dismay to the return-journey of the caravan. A perilous surprise awaited him which, with wonted adroitness, he turned to his purpose. “Having charge from my Captain to buy certain things, a Moor looked me in the face, knew me and asked me ‘Where are you from?’ I answered: ‘I am a Moslem.’ His reply was: ‘You lie.’ ‘By the head of the Prophet,’ I said, ‘I am a Moslem’; whereto he answered: ‘Come to my house’; and I followed him thither. Then he spake to me in Italian, telling me whence I had come that he knew me to be no Moslem; and that he had been in Genoa and Venice; whereof he gave me proof. When I understood this, I told him that I was a Roman, and had become a Mameluke at Cairo (!) Whereat he rejoiced greatly, and treated me with much honour.” Varthema now began to ask questions of his host; craftily affecting ignorance of recent events and pretending to be very hostile to Christians and greatly indignant at hearing of the appearance of the Portuguese in Eastern Seas. “At this, he showed me yet greater honour, and told me everything, point by point. So, when I was well instructed, I said to him: ‘O friend, I beseech you in the name of the Prophet to tell me of some way to escape from the Caravan; for I would go to those who are the Christians’ bitterest foes. Take my word that, if they knew what I can do, they would search me out, even as far as Mecca.’ Then he: ‘By the faith of our Prophet, tell me, what can you do?’ I replied that I was the most skilful artificer in large mortars in the world. Hearing this, he exclaimed: ‘Mohammed be praised for ever, who has sent such an one to the Moslem and God.’” Whereupon, a bargain was struck. The Moor was ready to hide Varthema in his house, if Varthema could induce the Captain of the Caravan to pass fifteen camels, laden with spices, duty free. Varthema was so confident of having thoroughly ingratiated himself with the Captain that he was ready to negotiate for the free passage of a hundred camels, if the Moor owned so many. “And, when he heard this, he was greatly pleased,” and gave full information as to how to get to India. There was no difficulty about bribing the Captain; and the day before the departure of the caravan, Varthema stole to the Moor’s house and lay there in concealment.
Next morning, two hours before daybreak, bands of men, as was the usage, went through the city, sounding trumpets and other instruments, and proclaiming death to all Mamelukes who should not mount for the journey to Syria. “At this,” says Varthema, “my breast was mightily troubled, and I pleaded with tears to the merchant’s wife, and I besought God to save me.” Soon he had the relief of knowing that the caravan was gone, and the Moorish merchant with it. He had left instructions with his wife to send Varthema on to Jidda, on the Red Sea, with the caravan returning to India. It was to start later than the Syrian caravan. Varthema was a man of winning ways, and he found no difficulty in fascinating man or woman. He was far from being as vain as, say, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, but, like that ingenuous gentleman, he does not neglect to inform us when he has pleased the fair. “I cannot tell how much kindness I received from this lady, and, in particular, from her niece of fifteen years. They promised to make me rich if I would stay on. But I declined their offer by reason of the pressing peril. I set out at noontide of the following day, with the caravan, to the no small sorrow of these ladies, who made much lament.”
In due time the caravan arrived at Jidda, which was then a very important mart and harbour. Varthemaimmediately made for a mosque, with thousands of indigent pilgrims, and stayed there a whole fortnight.
“All day long, I lay on the ground, covered up in my garments, and groaning as if I suffered great pain in my bowels and body. The merchants would ask: ‘Who is that, groaning so?’ Whereto the poor people about me would reply: ‘He is a poor Moslem who is dying.’ But when night came I would leave the mosque to buy food. Judge of what my appetite became when I could only get food (and that bad) once a day.”
When the caravan had left the port, he contrived to see the master of a ship bound for Persia who agreed to take him as a passenger; and on the seventeenth day of hiding at Jidda, the ship put forth on the Red Sea. To a true Moslem, the whole Eastern world as far as China was barely more perilous than the Mediterranean was to a Christian. Those were days when the seas teemed with pirates; but, on land, property was better safeguarded by the despotic rulers of Asia than it was in Europe. But the line between Eastern and Western traffic was rigidly drawn at certain marts of exchange. Such were Aleppo and Beyrout for commodities forwarded by way of the Persian Gulf; and still more important were Cairo and Alexandria, the marts of Mediterranean and Red Sea commerce. The Eastern trade was mainly in the hands of Arabs; but it was pursued by certain Greeks, Albanians and Circassians also, who, or their forefathers, had renounced Christianity for gain; and these were not few. Jidda and other ports of the Red Sea, as well as those of Somaliland, were crowded with ships, great and small, bearing spices, drugs, dyes and other Eastern goods for the markets of Western Asia and Europe. The Arabian coast of the Red Sea was hugged, and often, for days together, no progress could be made at night; for the multitude of rocks and sunken reefs rendered navigation perilous enough, even by day, and a look-out was always kept at the mast-head.
Varthema’s ship visited and made some stay at several ports which are now decayed. At one place, “coming in sight of dwellings on the shore, fourteen of us landed to buy victuals. But they were the folk called Bedouin; there was more than a hundred of them to our fourteen; and they greeted us with slings and stones. We fought for about an hour; and then they fled, leaving twenty-four of their number lying slain on the ground; for they were unclad, and the sling was their only weapon. We took all we could find, that is to say fowls, calves, oxen and other things for eating. But, in two or three hours time, the turmoil increased, and so did the natives of the land—to more than six hundred, in fact—and we were compelled to draw back to our ships.”
Onarriving at Aden; which was a place of call for every ship trading with India, Persia, and Ethiopia, custom-house officers at once came on board the ship, ascertained whence and when it had sailed, the nature of its freight, and how many were on board. Then the masts, sails, rudders and anchors were removed to ensure the payment of dues. On the second day after Varthema’s arrival, a passenger or sailor on board called him a “Christian dog, son of a dog,” the usual polished address of the proud Moslem to one who, albeit a co-believer, had not the good fortune to be born in the faith. This exclamation aroused a suspicion that he was a spy; for, a year before, Portuguese had appeared for the first time in the Arabian Sea, had captured certain vessels, and killed many of their crews. He was seized at once and violently carried off to the deputy of the Sultan of Yemen. Now this Sultan was an unusually merciful man, who rarely (Varthema says never) put anyone to death; so he was merely clapped into gaol, and his legs fettered with eighteen pounds weight of iron. On the third day of imprisonment, some Moslem sailors who had escaped in the warfare with the Portuguese, attacked the prison with the intention of slaying him; and the inhabitants were divided as to what they should do. The Emir’s deputy decided to spare the prisoners (another suspected person would seem to have been incarcerated with Varthema); and they languished sixty-five days in gaol. Then a message came from the Sultan, demanding that they should be brought before himself. So, instead of voyaging to Persia, Varthema, still in irons, was put on a camel and taken an eight days’ journey inland to Radâä. Ibn Abd-el Wahâb, Sultan of Yemen, was busy marshalling a large army. In it, were three thousandhorsemen, born of Christian parents, but sold, while still children, by “Prester John,” as the Portuguese called the King of Abyssinia. These slaves formed the bodyguard of the Sultan. At this moment the rule of Yemen was disputed among petty despots, and the Sultan was bent on reducing the turbulent, rebellious tribes to his sole sway.
Varthema is brought in to the Sultan’s presence; his life hangs on a hair; it is as if the sharp edge of the scimitar were already at his neck; yet he does not lose his presence of mind. “I am of the country of Rûm, my lord,” he began; and he began with a “parliamentary expression” for, to an Arab, Rûm meant Asia Minor, recently the possession ofNewRome,i.e., of the Byzantine Empire. “I became a Mohammedan at Cairo (another trifling inexactitude). I came to Medina of the Prophet, to Mecca, and then to your country. Everyone says, sir, that you are a sheik” (a Mohammedan priest). “Sir, I am your slave. Sir, do you not know that I am a Moslem?” The Sultan called upon him to repeat the formula: “‘There is no God but the God: Mohammed is the Prophet of God.’ But, whether it was the will of God, or by reason of fear which gat hold of me, I could not pronounce these words.” Our hero was indeed lucky, for the merciful Sultan only ordered him to be taken to prison and kept there under strict guard while he should be away. For he was about to attack Sanäa, the ancient capital of Yemen. And so, “they guarded me for three months, supplying me with a loaf of millet each morning, and another in the evening; yet six such loaves had not satisfied my hunger for a single day; nevertheless, if I might have had my fill of water, I had thought myself happy.”
In the East, the body of an insane person is believed to be occupied by some spirit; and mad folk are therefore treated as irresponsible. Varthema knew this, and he, two fellow-prisoners, one of whom he twice speaks of as “my companion,” and yet another, “a Moor,” arrangedthat one of the number should pretend to be mad in order to help the others. The trick is time-honoured in the East; thereby David escaped the hands of Achish, King of Gath. Lots were cast, and the lot fell to Varthema. We can see him, like the Israelite King, “changing his behaviour, scrabbling at the doors of the gate, and letting the spittle fall down upon his beard”; he was allowed to go out, crowds of children following him and shying stones at him. In self-defence he had to store up a plentiful supply of like missiles in his garment and give a sharp return. “Truly,” says he, “I never was so tired with labour and worn out as during the first three days of my feigning.”
Now, the prison adjoined the palace; and there remained in the palace one of the Sultan’s three wives with her “twelve or thirteen very comely maidens, rather more than inclining to black. This queen” (so Varthema dubs her) “was very tender-hearted to me. She was for ever at her lattice with her damsels, staying there throughout the day to see me and to talk with me; and I, while many men and merchants were jeering at me, went naked before the queen; for she took very great pleasure in seeing me. I might not go from her sight; and she gave me right good food to eat; so that I gained my point.”
One of the most striking characteristics of the men of the Renaissance is the combination of great intellectual power and lofty enthusiasm with mediæval brutality. Now, the Sultana, in whose veins the warm blood of the East flowed freely, suffered from the dull monotony of the harem. She wanted excitement. She suggested to the supposed madman that he should slay and spare not; for the fault would not be imputed to him. He took the hint at once. He called on a fat sheep to declare its religion, repeating the very words which the Sultan had addressed to him: “Prove yourself a Moslem.” “The patient beast making no reply, I took a staff andbroke its legs. The queen looked on laughing, and fed me with the flesh thereof during three days; nor do I remember to have eaten better. Three days later, I killed an ass, which was bringing water to the palace, in the same way; because that he would not become a Moslem. And, in like manner, I cudgelled a Jew, so that I left him for dead.” One of the gaolers, whom he declares to have been more mad than he, called him “Christian dog, son of a dog.” This was enough: a fierce battle by lapidation began—Varthema alone, on the one side; the gaoler and children on the other. Varthema allowed himself to be badly hit by two stones, “which I could have avoided easily; but I wanted to give colour to my madness. So I went back to my prison, and blocked the door up with large stones, and there I lived for the space of two days without meat or drink. The queen and others thought I might be dead, and caused the door to be broken open. Then these dogs brought me pieces of marble saying, ‘eat; this is sugar;’ and others gave me grapes filled with earth, and called it salt; but I ate the marble and grapes and everything, all mixed up.”
It was an enlightened custom in Mohammedan countries to examine into the mental condition of insane people at regular intervals. Rabbi Benjamin, of Tudela, the Spanish Jew, tells us that, in the sixth decade of the Twelfth Century, he found Commissioners in lunacy at Baghdad; although he also speaks of that barbarous practice of chaining the madman which obtained in England until some centuries later. Two Mohammedan Ascetics, who dwelt in the mountains as hermits, were brought to the prison to determine whether Varthema might be a person bereft of mere mundane reason through his exceptional sanctity, or only ordinarily mad. The hermits took opposite views on this knotty question, and spent an hour in violently contradicting one another. The prisoner lost all patience and, anxious to be quitof them, put a stop to the discussion by the simple device which Gulliver employed to extinguish the conflagration at Lilliput. “Whereupon,” says he, “they ran off crying ‘he is mad; he is no saint.’ The queen and her maidens saw all this, for they were looking on from their casement, and burst into laughter, vowing that ‘by God, by the head of the Prophet, there is no one in the world like this man.’”
Next day Varthema followed this up by laying hold of the gaoler by those two horns or tufts of hair which were then, as now, fashionable in Arabia, kneeling on his stomach, and so belabouring him that he “left him for dead,” like the Jew. The queen was again vastly entertained, and called out: “Kill those beasts.”
But it was discovered that, all this time, Varthema’s fellow-prisoners had been digging a hole through the prison wall, and, moreover, had contrived to get free from their shackles. The Sultan’s deputy was fully aware of the favour with which the Sultana regarded Varthema; and the lady knew him to be ready to carry out her commands. She ordered the prisoner to be kept in irons, but to be removed into a doorless lower chamber of the palace, and to be provided with a good bed, good food and perfumed baths. For, as the reader will guess, she had fallen in love with the captive. Sexual love among Arabians is anything but a refined or spiritual passion; and the harem has not been found precisely a temple of chastity anywhere,—mainly, perhaps, because it is a harem. And this lady possessed a temperament as sanguine and scandalous as any Messalina or Faustina or Empress of all the Russias. Alas! Fate doomed her to bloom unseen in Arabia, and waste her sweetness on its desert air. At the end of a few days, she started by bringing Varthema some dainty dish in the dead of night. He tells us how, “coming into my chamber, she called ‘Jonah! Come. Are you hungry?’ ‘Yes, by Allah!’ I replied; and I rose to my feet and went to her in my shirt. And she said: ‘No, no, not with your shirt on.’ I answered: ‘O Lady, I am not mad now’; whereto she: ‘By Allah, I know you never were mad. In the world there is no man like you.’ So, to please her, I took off my shirt, holding it before me for the sake of decency; and thus did she keep me for a space of two hours, gazing at me as if I had been a nymph, and making her plaint to God in this wise: ‘O Allah! Thou hast made this man white as the sun. Me, Thou hast made black. O Allah! O Prophet! my husband is black; my son is black; this man is white. Would that this man might become my husband! And while speaking thus, she wept and sighed continuously, and kept passing her hands over me all the time, and promising that she would make the Sultan remove my irons when he returned.’
“Next night the queen came with two of her damsels, and said, ‘Come hither, Jonah.’ I replied that I would come. ‘Would you like me to come and stay a little while with you,’ she asked. I answered, ‘no, lady. I am in chains; and that is enough.’ Then she said, ‘Have no fear. I take it all on my own head. If you do not want me, I will call Gazelle, or Tajiah, or Gulzerana to come instead.’ She spoke thus because she was working to come herself. But I never gave way; for I had thought it all out.”
Varthema had no desire to remain in Yemen, even should he mount its throne,—a far less likely event than discovery and a horrible death. “I did not wish to lose both my soul and my body,” he writes. “I wept all night, commending myself to God.”
“Three days after this the Sultan returned, and straightway the queen sent to tell me that, if I would stay with her, she would make me rich.”
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Varthema is the man to mould circumstances to his will: no web, however cunningly woven shall hold him prisoner; his keen wit is ready to comply with the Sultana’s request, if she will have his fetters struck off.
The lady fell into the trap. She manifests the clever, feminine guile of the harem in her dealings with Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb, but she is no match for Varthema. The Sultan is a strong man and a mighty man of valour; but he is uxorious, and as wax in her hands. She ordered the prisoner to be brought at once before the Sultan and herself. Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb, good easy man, asked Varthema whither he desired to go if he should choose to release him. The mendacious Italian replied: “‘O Lord, I have neither father nor mother; wife nor child; brother nor sister; only Allah, the Prophet, and you. You give me food, and I am your slave.’ And I wept without ceasing.” Then the artful Sultana reminded the Sultan that he would have to account to God, of whose anger he should beware, for having kept an innocent man so long time in prison. Abd-el-Wahâb proved as unsuspicious and benevolent as history declares him to have been; yet he was as firm and able as a ruler as he was bold and experienced in arms. His Sultana knew how to play on his merits and convert them into defects. He at once granted Varthema liberty to go whithersoever he chose. “And, immediately, he had my irons struck off; and I knelt before him; and kissed his feet and the hands of the queen. She took me by the hand, saying: ‘Come with me, poor wight, for I know thou art dying of hunger.’ When I was with her in her chamber, she kissed me more than a hundred times; and then she gave me excellent food. But I had seen her speak privily to the Sultan, and I thought she had begged me from him for a slave. Wherefore, I said: ‘I will not eat, unless you promise me my freedom.’ She replied: ‘Be silent, madman. You know not what Allah will bestow. If you are good, you shall be an Emir.’ Now, I knew what kind of lordship she desired to bestow on me; so I answered that she should let me get into fitter condition; for fear filled me with other than amorous thoughts. She replied: ‘By Allah, you say well. I will give you eggs, fowls, pigeons, pepper,cinnamon, cloves and cocoa-nuts every day.’17So, at these good words and promises, I plucked up heart a bit. To restore me to health, I stayed fifteen or twenty days in the palace. One day, she sent for me and asked if I would go a-hunting with her; which offer I refused not; and, at our return, feigned me to fall sick by reason of weakness; and so continued for the space of eight days; during which time she was unceasing in sending persons to visit me. One day, I sent to tell her that I had vowed to God and Mohammed to visit a holy man at Aden, who was reputed to work miracles.”
We may not count meanness among thepetits défautsof this lady of spacious passions. She was “well pleased” with Varthema’s suggestion, and provided him with a camel and twenty-five golden ducats—a sum which would go a long way in Arabia. We shall see presently to what use he applied it. Eight days’ journeying brought him to the holy man of Aden; and the second day after his arrival, he professed that he was cured. He wrote to the Sultana that, since Allah had been so merciful, he wished to see the whole of her kingdom. “This I did because the fleet which was there could not set sail again for a month. I spoke with a skipper in secret, and told him I wished to go to India, and would give him a handsome present if he would take me. He replied that he wished to touch at Persia first.” Nothing better could have fallen in with Varthema’s wishes. Meanwhile he would explore Arabia Felix.
So, having adroitly contrived to reject the love of the Light of the Harem without exciting her fury, and even coming by her purse, he turns the opportune gift to account, and fills up the month of waiting by a zig-zag camel-ride through Southern Yemen—the first and boldest European traveller in the district, and the one who has penetrated
it must thoroughly. With the intention of doing this in his mind, he ends his chapters on “How the women of Arabia Felix are partial to White Men,” and on “The liberality of the Queen.”
His record of Southern Yemen bears witness to a shrewd observant eye and a tenacious memory. Probably he travelled mostly with caravans. He gives an account of the natural features of the land, its curious domesticated animals, its wild beasts, its vegetable productions, its trade, the colour, manners and dress of its strange natives—all borne out by a variety of independent testimony. He visited many cities. One, he found barbarous and poor; another, renowned for its attar of roses. Several of these towns were flourishing centres of trade. He even got to Sanäa, the walls whereof were so wide that “eight horses might go abreast on the top of them.” Apparently Abd-el-Wahâb had not yet conquered the petty chieftain, El Mansûr, who reigned there; so Varthema found himself in the domain of the Sultan’s bitter foe. We hear that rumour gave this ruler a mad son who would bite, and slay, and then feed on his human victims. Varthema again tells us of other madmen, Shiites and Sunnites, the rival sects of the Mohammedan world, who kill each other like dogs for Religion’s sake. At Yerim, he talked with many who asserted that they had reached their hundred and twenty-fifth year; but, since there was no registration of birth, we may venture to entertain our doubts. He tells us how it was the fashion throughout Arabia to twist the hair into horns, and how the women wore loose trousers. He came to El-Makrana, where “the Sultan keeps more gold than a hundred camels might bear; and I say this because I have seen it.” What became of that mighty bulk of gold? The Arabian chroniclers tell us the firm, merciful and increasing rule of Abd-el-Wahâb in Yemen had a tragic end: Turkish invaders captured him and put him to death, not in the heat of warfare, but in cold blood.
Varthema “ran some risk from the multitude of apes” (of which Niebuhr also speaks), and from “animals like lions (hyenas?). We passed on in very great danger from the said animals, and with no little hunting of them. However, we killed very many with bows and slings and dogs; and thereby passed in safety.”
On reaching Aden he repeated the trick which had proved so successful at Jidda. “I took shelter in a mosque,” he says, “feigning to be sick, and there I lurked all day long; but, at night, I went forth to find the skipper of the ship; and he smuggled me aboard.”
Forsix days the wind was favourable; but it was now December of the year 1503; and on the seventh day out, the North Eastern monsoon drove the vessel back “with 25 others, laden with madder for the dyeing of clothes. By dint of very great labour, we made the port of Zeila” (on the African Coast, opposite to Aden); “and tarried there five days both to see it and to wait for better weather.” Zeila was a great place for traffic in gold and ivory, the law was well administered; but the cruel slave-trade prevailed there then as, in a different form, it did up to our own times. The Christian dominions of Abyssinian “Prester John” were raided by Arabs; his subjects captured; and sold in Egypt, Arabia, Persia and India. The merchants here would seem to have found a profitable trade in beasts left with but a single horn; for Varthema saw some, which, however, were quite different from those wonderful unicorns at Mecca. He gives a faithful description of the black and white Berbera sheep of Zeila.
The weather having improved, the ship touched at Berbera, and then sailed up the Gulf of Aden and across the Arabian Sea. Twelve days saw her at Diu, an island to the south of the Indian Peninsula of Kathiawar and subject to the Sultan of Gujarat. Varthema calls it the “port of the Turks”; but by Turks we must understand Mohammedan inhabitants of the Levant who had settled at Diu. It was an important halt for ships trading between India and Arabia and Persia. The vessel which bore Varthema must have been a tramp, picking up what cargo offered, and altering her course from time to time, to dispose of it; for, after spending two days at Diu, we find her taking a three days run up the Gulf of Cambay to Gogo, a place “of great traffic, fat, and rich; where all are Mohammedans.” She now recrossed the ocean to Eastern Arabia, and put in at Julfar, on the shores ofOman. Once again she reversed her course; and a favourable wind bore her to Muscat, a port which is still of some importance, and which, at that time, was one of the small independent States of Arabia. Then she tacked back, and came to New Ormuz, a port on the island of Jeruan.
Old Ormuz was a city on the mainland, which Marco Polo visited in the eighth decade of the Thirteenth Century, but, shortly after his time, almost all the population deserted the old city for the island. As in the days of Ibn Batûta it was famous for its pearl-fisheries. “Here,” writes Varthema, “are found the largest pearls in the world”; and hence it is that Milton couples the wealth of Ormuz with that of India.18“At three days’ voyage from this island, fishers pay out ropes, one from either end of their little boats. To each rope, a big stone is tied, so as to keep the boat moored; and they pay out yet another rope to the bottom, with a stone to it, from the middle of the boat, whereby one of these fishermen, having hung two bags round his neck and tied a big stone to his feet, goes down fifteen paces into the water, and stays there as long as he is able, to find those oysters wherein are pearls. These he puts into the bag, and gets quit of the stone at his feet, and comes up by one of the ropes aforesaid.” The pearl-diver is not given the wholly impossible time under water which Ibn Batûta credited him with. With customary caution our Italian is content to say that he “stays there as long as he is able.”
This trade and the city of Ormuz were in the hands of Arabs, who paid tribute to the King of Persia, and were dependent for food on the mainland. Ormuz was one of the great centres along that trade-route between the East and the Levant, which traversed the Persian Gulf,and made its way by Bagdad, and the Euphrates Valley and Aleppo to the Mediterranean; just as Aden was one of the great centres of the other route through the Red Sea and Egypt to Cairo and Alexandria. Our traveller would pass along streets crowded with men from many nations.
From Ormuz comes a tale of cold-blooded parricide, fratricide, and subtle perfidy very characteristic of the dynastic families of Asia. “At the time when I visited this land, there happened that which you shall hear.” The Sultan of Ormuz had eleven sons, of whom the youngest was judged to lack half his wits, and the eldest was, beyond doubt, “a devil unchained.” This Sultan had purchased two Abyssinian children, and brought them up as carefully as if they had been his own sons; for it was a practice in Arabia and India to rely on the valour and sagacity of Abyssinian slaves, to entrust them with the most important military commands, and to consult them as closest advisers. One of these men was named Caim; the other Mohammed. One night, when, all was dark and silent in the palace, that “devil unchained,” the eldest son found an opportunity to put out the eyes of his father, his mother and all his brethren excepting those of his youngest brother; for he supposed him to be incapable of aspiring to the throne. Not satisfied with blinding his victims, he caused them to be burned alive within the palace-enclosure. Next morning he proclaimed himself Sultan; and the supposed fool fled to a mosque; for the rights of sanctuary were to be found there, if anywhere. At first, the city was in tumult; but the bloody deed was over and done with; and a city of trade is soon glad to quiet down and resume business. The problem now before the new Sultan was: how to get rid of Caim and Mohammed. Both men were in high position: that were a small matter; but they held command of fortresses. Somehow, he managed to get Mohammed to venture into his presence, and, after making much ofhim, breathed into his ear that, if he would slay Caim, he should be rewarded with the command of five fortresses. Mohammed protested: “‘O Sidi, I have shared bread with him from our childhood; for thirty years. By Allah, I cannot bring my mind to do this thing.’ Then said the Sultan: ‘Well, let it alone.’” Having failed in the attempt to induce Mohammed to murder Caim, the Sultan now tried to induce Caim to murder Mohammed. Caim made not the least demur, and straightway sought out his old friend and companion. Mohammed at once read what had happened written in the face of his false friend, and charged him with the fact. Caim, guilt-stricken, cast his dagger at the feet of Mohammed, fell on his knees, and implored forgiveness of the meditated crime. Mohammed reproached Caim in the mildest way, and then either from magnanimity or from policy, or from both, he passed over his treachery; but made him vow to go to the Sultan and pretend that he had done the deed.
“When the Sultan saw him, he demanded: ‘Hast thou slain thy friend?’ Caim answered: ‘I have, Sidi, by Allah!’ Then the Sultan: ‘Come here’; and Caim went close up to him; whereupon, the Sultan seized him and did him to death with his dagger.” Three days passed, and then Mohammed stole stealthily into the Sultan’s chamber, who, when he saw him, was greatly perturbed, and exclaimed: ‘O dog, son of a dog, are thou still alive?’ Mohammed replied: ‘Yea, I live, in spite of thee, and thee will I slay, thou worse than dog or devil!’ Both men being armed, they fought together for a space of time; but in the end, Mohammed killed the Sultan, and put the palace into a state of defence. But, because he was much beloved, the populace ran thither with shouts of ‘Long live Sultan Mohammed.’
Mohammed was a man as prudent and experienced as he was ready and resolute: he saw a way to do the state good service and to preserve for himself the reality ofpower while maintaining the shows of legality and removing the occasions of envy. At the end of twenty days, he call the chief citizens together, “and spake to them in this wise: That what he had done had been of strong necessity; that he knew he had no right to the throne; and that he begged them to allow him to transfer his power to the son who was supposed to be crazy. And thus the son became Sultan; but, nevertheless Mohammed rules. The whole city said, ‘of a surety, this man is the friend of Allah.’ For which reason, he was made Governor of the City and of the Sultan; the Sultan being in the state aforesaid.”
A very narrow little strait lies between Ormuz and the mainland of Persia. Varthema left his “tramp,” and crossed over. His itinerary through the ancient and renowned Empire is by no means clear; but we find him at Herat, 600 miles in a bee-line from Ormuz, and at that time the capital of Khôrasân and the residence of its able ruler—Sultan Hosein Mirza, a man who boasted his descent from Timour the Tartar. Varthema speaks of Herat as being a great market for stuffs, especially silk stuffs, and for rhubarb. Badger, commenting on this statement, suggests that Herat lay on the direct route along which rhubarb was conveyed between Thibet, Mongolia, and the West. Certainly exports and imports of Persia, India, Turkestan and Afghanistan passed through Herat.
It strikes one as singular that, although Varthema Would seem to have journeyed some 1,500 miles in Persia, he says very little about the country. This may be because the Venetians were directly acquainted with that fascinating Empire; and consequent on this, a general knowledge of it would spread throughout Italy. For, when the great blow was struck at Venetian trade by the Turkish capture of Constantinople and Negroponte, and the “Queen of the Adriatic” no longer held “the gorgeous East in fee,” she sent three separate embassies on a bold and perilousmission. She sought to secure the alliance of Persia against their common foe, the Ottoman Turk. Few records of travel and adventure are more animating or fuller of interest than those of the Venetian Ambassadors, Barbaro and Contarini.19Varthema must have made a bold journey. The “Adventures of Hadji Baba of Ispahan” probably furnish as true and vivid a picture of what life and travel in Persia were like in the early years of the sixteenth century as they do of that which was to be experienced in the early years of the nineteenth century, Persia has remained in the same case of what may be called immutable instability from the days when she was won for Islam down to the days of the immortal Morier and to our own times.
From Herat, he took the caravan-route back to Shiraz in Persia, a journey of fully 700 miles. Here was a great mart for the turquoises, rubies and other jewels of Khôrasân and Badakshan, as well as for musk and ultramarine; and he learned something of the business capacity of the Persian; he complains that “our musk”—that delight, with other overpowering scents of his nation and time—“is adulterated by these folk, who are master-hands for intellect, and misleaders beyond all other peoples.”
It is a problem how Varthema contrived to cover such vast distances on what was probably a lean purse. He is silent as to his financial resources; as we have said it is unlikely that his private means were considerable, and it would seem that he did not trade. As a Mameluke he would receive payment which carried him to Aden; and the money which the enamoured Sultana furnished him with would partly, if not wholly, give him the means to reach Persia. But he employed his infinite power to charm; he was burthened with no weak scruple as to blinding a newly-captured friend and using him, withwise moderation, in the service of that central purpose which was the heart of all his being. And thus, as we shall presently see, like Iago, he made his fool his purse. But he is capable of appreciating the good qualities of the generous friend whom he made his dupe; and is careful to pay tribute to him. If he must deceive in order to use him, it is to realize his purpose of seeing the world at first-hand and recording its wonders.
After remarking on the tricks of Persian traders, he adds: “Yet I must also say they are the best companions and the most generous among men. I speak thus with knowledge; having had experience of a Persian merchant of Herat in Khôrasân, whom I met in this city of Shiraz. He had known me at Mecca two years before, and spoke to me thus: ‘Jonah, what is your business here? Are you not the same man who went to Mecca some time back?’ I replied that I was, and that to find out about the world was the quest I was on. Then said he: ‘Allah be praised! for I shall have a companion to make discovery with me. Do not leave me.’ We stayed on fifteen days in this same city of Shiraz.” Varthema’s magnetic charm was at work; and luck stood his friend in bringing him across this old acquaintance.
The twain set off together from Shiraz, bound for Samarkand in Turkestan; for the merchant, whose name Was Cazazionor, insisted on keeping Varthema with him, and presumably payed all expenses. But they travelled through a land in turmoil. The struggle between the Ottoman Turks established in Europe and the Turcoman dynasty of the White Sheep established in Persia was happy indeed for the Christian world, since it diverted the forces of Constantinople to the East at a time when Europe lay divided and helpless, but it was disastrous for Persia and ended by throwing her into confusion. Just now Ismail-es-Sufi, a descendant from the Prophet, who had overthrown the forces of Bayazid, and laid the foundations of a great Persian dynasty, which endured more than twocenturies, was consolidating a country which had been torn by internecine strife. As is so often the case, religious differences afforded the trumpet-call to the struggles of peoples. As in the days of Ibn Batûta the Sunnites of the West fought the Shiites of the East for domination; but they fought in the name of Allah and under the banners of sectarian difference. In order to seat himself firmly on the throne, the Great Sofi, for so Europeans called the monarch of the new, able and powerful dynasty roused the enthusiasm of the native Shiites, and converted the less numerous native Sunnites to his own true faith by blood and iron. Varthema tells us that the Sofi was passing through the land with flame and slaughter.
Cazazionor, finding the country so disturbed, thought it wise to return towards Herat. So delighted was he with the personality and society of “Jonah” that he offered to give him his niece to wife. She was a beautiful girl named Sharus, a feminine noun in Persian as in other languages, although it signifies The Sun. Cazazionor took Varthema with him to his own home; which was probably at Shiraz; and presented the young lady to him. She could not have attained womanhood; for he was allowed to see her. He feigned delight at her beauty; but he says that his mind was “bent to other things”—probably less on wife and children at home than on his still insatiate desire for travel. After enjoying Cazazionor’s hospitality for eight days, he returned with his host to Ormuz, and took ship for Sind. They were landed at Joah, a port on the delta of the Indus, and proceeded to Cambay, an important harbour in Gujarat, whence fifty ships, laden with cotton, sailed yearly to different lands.
BeforeBatûta reached India, and therefore long before Varthema’s time, Afghan chiefs had swooped down on the fertile plains of India with the war cry of “Allah and the Prophet,” and Northern India, with the exception of its southern and western districts, where the Rajpoots maintained their independence, was now under the rule of various Moslem despots. The Deccan was under the sway of a powerful Moslem dynasty—the Brahmany Sultans; but what is now the presidency of Madras and Mysore was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, subject to the Hindu Râja of Narsinga. A full century of conflict had resulted in a partial triumph of the Moslem: the sovereigns of Narsinga paid a certain tribute to be left at peace, although the western coast was, in a measure, protected by a wall of mountains. But Portuguese traders had just sailed into the Arabian Sea and had established themselves here and there at trading stations on the Malabar coast; and these they had fortified. On his outward journey, Varthema, for obvious reasons, showed no disposition to cultivate the acquaintance of these Christian Europeans.
Gujarat was under the rule of Fath Khân, whom Varthema calls Sultan Machamuth. “You shall now hear of the manner of his life. He and all his people are Mohammedans; and he keeps twenty thousand horsemen always with him. When he arises in the morning, fifty elephants, each with a man atop, come to the palace and do him reverence; and this is all the labour they are put to.... When he eats, fifty or sixty different kinds of music discourse; such as trumpets, different sorts of drums, recorders and fifes, and many others; and the elephants again do him reverence.... The Sultan’smoustachios are so long that he ties them up over his head, as a woman doth tie her tresses; and his beard, which is white, comes down to his girdle.” Fath Khân was greatly dreaded by his subjects; and they believed strange things concerning him; stories which are worthy of the Arabian Nights. These Varthema heard and set down, as did Barbosa, who travelled in the East a few years after the Sultan’s death. Machamuth was reputed to eat poison daily, so that, while he himself had become poison-proof, he had only to spit at a foe and death followed within half an hour. “Every night that he shall sleep with one of his three or four thousand women, they shall take her up dead in the morning.”
The Sultan was continually at war with a neighbouring Hindu Râja; and his Kingdom of Gujarat had been taken from the Jains—“a race which eats of nothing wherein courseth blood, and will kill nothing that hath life. They are neither Moors nor heathens; and I believe that, if they should be baptised, they would all be saved by their good works; for they never do unto others what they would not that others should do unto them. For dress, some wear a shirt; some, only a cloth round their middle and a large red cloth on their head; and their colour is tawny. And the aforesaid Sultan took their kingdom from them because of their goodness.”
These Jains, who at first, mainly differed from Buddhists in believing that the purification of the soul resulted in a Heaven and not in Nirvâna, and the relation of whose creed to Buddhism is far from being clear, had built some of their remote and mysterious temples on the heights of Gujarat, where through clouds of incense, female figures, clothed in scarlet and gold might be seen, weaving strange figures and chanting monotonous psalms. But these, Varthema, posing as a pious Mohammedan, might not see; and he makes no reference to the famous temples of Gujarat.
From Cambay, the Persian and our Italian sailed alongthe coast to Chaul; thence to a port which has disappeared but which was near Ratnagiri, on the Concan coast; and thence to the island of Goa. “On this island there is a fortress by the sea, kept by a Mameluke with four hundred other Mamelukes. If the captain shall come across any white man he gives him much wage; but first he sends for two jerkins, made of leather, one for him and one for him that wishes to take service; each puts on a jerkin, and they fall to. If he prove himself a strong man, he is put among the able men; but if not, he is set to other task than that of fighting. The captain wages great battle with the Râja of Narsinga” (Bijayanagar the capital of the Carnatic).
From Goa, seven days of land-travel brought the pair to “the city of Decan” (Bîjapûr), a Mohammedan place where “the King lives in great pride and pomp. Many of them that serve him have their very shoes adorned with rubies, diamonds, and other jewels; so you may judge how many garnish their fingers and ears. They wear robes or shirts of silk, shoes and breeches after the style of sailors; and ladies go quite veiled, as in Damascus.”
Thence they returned to the coast, and visited ports, many of which have decayed or disappeared. These were subject, but not always friendly, to the Râja of Narsinga; and the Kinglet of Honawar was friendly to the Portuguese. But in spite of incessant warfare, life and property were respected. The journey now lies along the Malabar coast to Cannanore: “the port to which steeds are brought from Persia, and you must know that the levy for each horse is twenty-five ducats.... Here we began to meet with spices.” Here, also, were Portuguese established.
They now turned their steps to Narsinga, where Heemrâj held his court. Varthema calls him “King,” and indeed he ruled, for like the Frank “Mayors of the palace,” he had gradually usurped the powers of the real Râja, and held actual sway in the place of an ancient race which boasted an uninterrupted succession lasting seven centuries.The city was great and grand; the court, splendid; the revenue, enormous; the army boasted 40,000 horsemen and 400 elephants, and was constantly doing battle with the Moslem and neighbouring Pagan States. “The elephant wears armour; in particular, head and trunk are armed. To the trunk a sword of two arms’ length is fastened, and as broad as a man’s hand.” “Seven armed men go upon the said elephant,” shielded by a sort of castle, “And in that manner they fight.” “The King wears a cap of cloth of gold; and a quilted garment of cotton when he goes to the wars; over this a garment beset with gold coins; and all manner of jewels are at the border thereof. His horse wears jewels which are of more value than are some of our cities. When he journeys for pleasure, three or four kings and five or six thousand horsemen attend him. Wherefore, one may account him a most powerful prince. The common people go naked save for a loin-cloth.... In this realm you may go where you list in safety; but it behoves you to beware of lions on the way.”
Varthema was very much impressed by the singular structure and equally singular habits of the elephant, and he speaks admiringly of its sagacity and strength. He devotes a considerable space to this noble beast; gives us the most accurate details; and recurs to the subject over and over again.
The Persian jewel-merchant and he left Narsinga after two days’ stay, and visited places which were of much importance then, but which have disappeared from the modern map. At last, they arrive at Calicut.
“Having come to the place where the greatest fame of India is gathered up” our traveller devotes the whole of his second book concerning India to Calicut and the manners and customs of its people, as being those of all the inhabitants of that part of the peninsula which lies between the Malabar and Coromandel coasts. From time out of mind Calicut had been a famous emporium;to it calico owes its name. When Islam arose, the spread of the Mohammedan faith stimulated the enterprise of the intrepid Arab sailor and merchant and of the renegade from Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The activity of the hardy Arab found scope by reason of the natural indolence of the Hindu and his dislike of the sea. A rich and well organized traffic sprang up between Persia and Arabia on the one side and China and the Spice Islands on the other. Even in China, the Arab contrived to settle; and Calicut remained the chief centre of the Eastern trade. Here, in the season of calm, might be seen the leviathan junks of China; and, at all times, the ships of every civilized Eastern people. But, by the time Varthema reached Calicut, the Arab had found Malacca to be a more convenient mart for the trade of the far-East; and Calicut, a little fallen from her high estate, had become mainly a market for the products of Southern India and Ceylon, and a port of call. And yet greater change was at hand. One of those new routes had been opened up which from time to time, abase the pride of commercial nations and transfer their wealth: the Portuguese rounded the Cape, reached East Africa, broke across the Ocean, and, in 1498, Vasco di Gama anchored off Calicut. The jealous Arabs burned down the factory which the native ruler had allowed the Portuguese to erect, and fierce seafights ensued, which were accompanied by much brutality. The contest was between the best sailors of Europe and the huge, but ill-built and ill-navigated fleets of the Arab traders. The latter were unable to expel or even to discourage the invaders, who, incensed at opposition, shewed no mercy, and suffered from severe reprisal. While Varthema was at Calicut, the Zamorin (as its ruler was called by those English travellers who arrived a little later) “agreed that the Moors should slay forty-eight Portuguese, whom I saw put to death. And for this reason the King of Portugal is always at war, and daily kills very many; and thereby the city is ruined, for inevery way it is at war.” Our traveller arrived at Calicut at the precise time when India, cast into a welter by Mohammedan aggression in its lust for wealth and dominion, was confronted with the yet more insatiate greed of European adventures for fabled gold and direct markets. The competitors vied with one another in all the arts of treachery, cruelty and fraud.
Calicut was a city of mean appearance, occupying an area of about a mile; but the “compounds” were spread over a space of six miles. It was crowded with traders from Ethiopia, Arabia and Persia, Syria and the Levant, Bengal and Sumatra. Varthema calculates that no less than fifteen thousand Moors were domiciled there. He visited the palace of the Zamorin, which was divided into chambers by wooden partitions, on which supernatural beings were carved—beings named dêvas in the Indian Scriptures, and taken by our Italian for devils. The flooring was a preparation of cow-dung, used then, as it is to-day, for its antiseptic properties. Ramna and Krishna and a demon-goddess called Mariamma were the chief objects of worship; so we are not surprised when we read that, in the “chapel” of the palace, the oil-lamps were set on tripods, “on each side whereof are three devils,in relievo, very fearful to behold. Such are the squires that bear lights to the King.” The chapel was small, but its wooden door was elaborately “carven with devils. In the middle of it is a devil seated, all in bronze; and the devil wears a three-fold crown, like unto that of the Papacy. He has four horns and four teeth, a huge mouth and nose, and his eyes strike terror into him that looketh thereon. Devils are figured around the said chapel; and on each side thereof a Satan is seated, in flaming fire, wherein are a great number of souls. And, the said Satan has a soul to his mouth with his right hand and with his left hand he grips a soul by its middle.” Perchance the chapel recalled memories of pictured hellson the walls of the Pisan Campo Santo, or of certain other mediæval frescoes at Florence.
He went to a great religious festival near Calicut. “Truly,” he says, “never did I see so many gathered together save at Mecca. From fifteen days’ journey round about came all the Nairs and Brâhmans to sacrifice.” Passing through trees which bore lights innumerable, one came to a tank, wherein the worshippers first bathed before entering the temple, which stood up from the middle of the tank. It had “two rows of columns, like San Giovanni in Fonte at Rome.” The head Brâhmans first anointed the heads of the worshippers with oil, and then burned incense, with elaborate ritual, and offered the sacrifice of a cock at an altar laden with flowers. “At one end of the altar is a Satan, which all go up to worship, and then depart, each on his own way.”
Early in the morning, it is the duty of the Brâhman to bathe in a tank of still water, and then to wash the idols with perfumed water; after which he burns incense before them; nor does the Zamorin eat of food that has not first been presented to the god. “Then the Brâhmans lie flat on the ground, but in a secret manner, and they do roll their eyes in a devilish way, and twist their mouths horribly for the space of a quarter of an hour; and then the time to eat is come. And men eat of food which has been cooked by men; but the women cook for themselves.”
Varthema’s account of the manners and habits of Southern India is neither so wholly accurate nor arranged with such lucidity as Hiuen-Tsiang’s record of the region of Ganges and Jumna, written nine centuries before. Nor does Southern India present us with such a high civilization as does the empire of Sîlâditya. But Varthema makes few statements that are not confirmed by other early travellers, and his record bears ample witness to a shrewd, observant eye and honest enquiry. He describes the Brâhmans; the Nairs, or warrior-caste; the artizans and other castes of the Malabar Coast. We learn thatno one of the two lowest castes may approach a Brâhman within fifty paces “unless he bid him do so”; wherefore they shout a warning as they pass along, and take private paths through the marshes, for, should they not cry aloud, and should any of the Nairs meet them, they may be killed by him, and no punishment follow thereupon.
The Nairs “eat no flesh without sanction from the Brâhmans; but other castes eat all manner of flesh, saving that of the cow.” The lower castes “eat mice and fish dried in the sun.” All sit on the ground at meals; and the upper castes use the leaf of a tree to scoop up their food from metal bowls; while the lower castes make balls of rice and take it by the hand from a pipkin. All castes and both sexes wear a cotton loin-cloth only. The lowest sort of people suckle their children for three months only, and then feed them on milk night and morning. “And when they have stuffed them therewith, they do not wash them, but cast them into the sand, where they lie until evening. As they are nearly black, one cannot tell whether they be little bears or buffaloes; and they look as if they were fed by the Devil.”
Justice was admirably administered—a characteristic of Hîndustân noticed and praised by Greeks, Romans, Arabians, and all travellers. In fact, life and property were fairly safe throughout all civilized Asia. Creditors, on proof of claim, drew a circle round their debtor with a green bough, and within this he must remain until he pay or perish. Should he leave the circle, his life was forfeit to the Zamorin. Murder was punished by impalement; wilful injury to another by fine. Traders transacted business by secret negotiation under a coverlet, certain signs being made with the fingers.
When a man is sick, he is visited by a dozen men, “dressed like devils,” who are accompanied by players on divers instruments. “These physicians carry fire in their mouths,” and go about on stilts fixed to their hands and feet; and so they go shouting and sounding themusic; so that truly they would make a hale man fall to the ground for fear at the sight of these ugly beasts. They force ginger juice on the sick; and, in three days, he is well again—cured in the main, one may surmise, by workings of belief on his expectant imagination. Abracadabra is a useful and time honoured ally to the learned professions. The spirits which preside over the fertility of rice are propitiated in a similar manner by the same men. “When the Nairs die, their bodies are burned with much pomp, and some among them keep the ashes; but common folk are buried within the house or garden.”